CMYK screenprinting

Getting back into college over the last couple of weeks has been a shock to the system as always. After group crit with tutor Liz Adamson and her third year students, I had a useful discussion with student Lydia Honeybone about CMYK screen-printing process. Thanks for your help Lydia. Decided to get straight to work in the printmaking workshop, before it gets too busy. Having chosen one of my digital images to work with, I used Photoshop to separate 4 colour-way screens of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key as demonstrated by Lydia. This week I have printed the acetates and had the screens prepared with the help of printmaking intern Natasha. I mixed paint to approximate tones of cyan and magenta and printed the first two layers. It felt great to be back screen-printing. It's two years since I did my last screen-printing project and I had almost forgotten how satisfying it is.

     Original Image: Red Tubes

    Cyan separation


    Magenta separation

The magenta layer has picked up some lettering from a previous image that was not fully removed from the screen. I love these serendipitous accidents.

    Cyan-Magenta layer
There's a very slight mis-registration here, which adds to the image, giving an indication of the process it is going through. I have decided to keep one version of this two colour print and then next week I will print the final two layers on the remaining copies.

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